Rdearman 2016-24 You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too.

[rdearman]

I have just posted part 3 of the subs2srs tutorial.

[rdearman]

And Dave finally got around to updating the Podcast! http://lollygagging-podcast.com/episode ... -can-help/

He is going to start publishing on Fridays now.

[rdearman]

A really sad thing to post. But I'm so excited because I managed to read a full sentence in Chinese characters and didn't even need the pinyin.

Anna 今年十五岁。

[rdearman]

A round up of 2018 from my language learning perspective isn't really that good. I was reviewing my log back to December of 2017. I started 2018 thinking I would just be reading some books in French and Italian while commuting. The thought of toying with Czech occurred to me because I had some DVD's and was thinking about subs2srsing them. I did do that, but never really used the resulting anki decks.

January:
I looked at the Noun Declension thread and decided against Czech. I eventually did start Czech, but did give up not long after. I discovered a number of French and Italian speakers where I was working and I occasionally attempted to speak with them. On the 9th of January I did something which was completely stupid and would haunt me for the rest of the year. I proposed a talk in French at the Polyglot Gathering. Silly, stupid boy!

I started a silly transcription experiment and I think I lasted a day before I gave that up. I was transcribing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I even went out and purchased a foldable French Aserty keyboard to do the job. It is still sitting on a desk, unused since January. Looking back at this little experiment, and given the my recent usage of Scriptorium for Chinese I might throw a little bit of Fr/It/Tn into the mix of my 20 minute rotations.

February:
I was once again moaning about working in French and Italian, but still working on transcription at the beginning of the month. Reviewing my log it is rather amazing all the great advice which I pretty much immediately ignored. I took the Dialang for French in February and only scored A1/A2 on the whole thing (except reading which was still B2). Triggering me once again to "Throw French in the 'waste of time' bucket". I still think these Dialang tests are a load of crap, how can you score "Below A1" in vocabulary, then score B2 in reading? After a lot of discussion and soul searching I decided the way forward was:

1. No point in stopping French because it will just deteriorate and then I'll be back to square one. But I'm not going to focus on French to the exclusion of all else.
2. I need to work more on written language in order to get better at spelling and grammar.
3. I need to work on expanding my vocabulary so I'll not stop using anki, but increase the amount of it which I use.
4. Book more conversations with natives, but direct the discussions outside of my comfort zone by setting a topic in advance.
5. Read more, watch more TV.

Only thing I really did was have more conversations. A lot more conversations.

I started a second log in French to practice writing as per a number of suggestions. This was a very bad idea and while I'm normally pretty good at taking criticism, this was just too much.

At the end of February iguanamon started the FLC and I decided to do Setswana and Czech. Expugnator gave me some brilliant advice on how to rotate through a number of languages. This is where my 20 minutes per day per language thing evolved from.


March:
Lots of work on Setswana finding resources and working on a schedule while commuting back and forth to London. This was the month Dandelion Ma introduced herself in my log, and has since been tutoring me in Mandarin.

April:
I dropped Czech from the FLC and started panicking about my presentation at the Gathering.

May:
Spent the entire month practising the presentation in French. It was terrible. Although Zenmonkey and his daughter assessed my French at about B2. Met a lot of people from the forum, friends both old and new. So it was a good time!

June:
We revealed we were going to learn Setswana before the next gathering and started a study group. I have to admit at this point everyone in the Setswana study group is better at it than me, and I started before they did. *sigh*

In June I loaded a lot of money in my iTalki account and decided at the end of my contract (no more commuting for awhile) that I would do lessons and maybe a couple of language exchanges.

Dandelion Ma officially became my tutor in June and we've tried to speak at least once a week since via Skype.

July:
This is the month where iTalki lessons and language exchanges really began to ramp up for me. I was doing between 9-12 hours per week in either French or Italian, either a lesson for a full hour, or a language exchange for an hour, 30 minutes per TL/NL. The last two weeks of the month I was doing 10-12 hours per week.

August:
Language exchanges were still happening fast and furious, but I had gotten them down to a more sensible amount like 8-9 LE's and 1-2 tutor sessions (full hour). I decided I would scale back the number of LE's, I managed to scale it back to 7 per week.

September:
Still doing LE's but at this point they were easy. I didn't need to schedule much since I had "regulars" who would do same time, same day each week. Then I would just fill in the blank times if I could with someone else. The discussions were getting much easier, since I was talking all the time. I didn't end each day with a whopper of a headache from speaking "foreign" and most of the times I actually enjoyed it.

Did the 6WC in Setswana and did not too badly.

October:
I started doing some written work with a long term French LE partner. It was going well, but we only managed a couple of weeks before she disappeared. This was the month I kicked off once again about grammar. I really dislike grammar books, but I'm not going to open that can of worms again! I reduced my language exchanges down to 5-6 and I figured I wasn't doing much. Others thought differently.

Most people would not consider 5-6 language exchanges and a page or two of Italian per night "zero" language study

November:
Mandarin became my new favourite language in November. I found some TV shows from Singapore and working with Dandelion on Skype was really getting me fired up. I started tracking my work in 20 minute segments.

December:
Still working each day on doing 20 minutes per language (+ 20 minutes of maths) which is keeping me active in the languages. Progressing slowly but surely and even working with grammar (shudder) books. So all in all an eventful year, although I don't think I've advanced much in any language. Hopefully next year will be the year when I finally know a second language.

Plans for 2019? Just keep trudging along and try to enjoy the journey and not worry so much about the destination.

[David27]

What shows from Singapore do you watch?

[MamaPata]

Seems like a pretty impressive year, not really the Way of the Lazy Fist at all!

[rdearman]

Seems like a pretty impressive year, not really the Way of the Lazy Fist at all!

See people get the wrong idea about "The Lazy Fist". The idea isn't that you don't do anything and be lazy all the time. The Way is about finding ways of doing things which get the same result with less effort. Bill Gates understands the lazy fist:

“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” ― Bill Gates

Sometimes of course there isn't an easy way to do the job, so you have to do it the hard way.

What shows from Singapore do you watch?

Recently I've watched a show called SINGese about Singaporean Chinese and some of the unique words they have there. Previously I really liked the show Say It! 好好说 慢慢讲 but they only did 2 seasons. But it was really enjoyable. I also like the actor/presenter Pornsak Prajakwit and watched a couple of shows of his about foodie type stuff. I haven't watched anything more recent. I have to watch everything on catch-up-tv but I do like a lot of the shows. Pornsak is a pretty impressive polyglot, he speaks Mandarin, Malay, English and Thai well enough to present television shows in all of them.

[Brun Ugle]

I loved your year in review. That was fun. I'm not sure I want to look back at my own year though. As I recall, there was a lot of whining and not nearly as much progress as I'd hoped, pretty much like every year.

Hopefully next year will be the year when I finally know a second language.

Good luck on that. I've almost given up hope on knowing a second language.

Seems like a pretty impressive year, not really the Way of the Lazy Fist at all!

See people get the wrong idea about "The Lazy Fist". The idea isn't that you don't do anything and be lazy all the time. The Way is about finding ways of doing things which get the same result with less effort. Bill Gates understands the lazy fist:

“I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.” ― Bill Gates

Sometimes of course there isn't an easy way to do the job, so you have to do it the hard way.

Sometimes the hard way is the easy way.

[rdearman]

Good luck on that. I've almost given up hope on knowing a second language.

In that case you should try French like you said you were going to. I hear 2019 is the year of the French language learner. I think they are giving out cookies at the gathering for French learners.

[zjones]

Good luck on that. I've almost given up hope on knowing a second language.

In that case you should try French like you said you were going to. I hear 2019 is the year of the French language learner. I think they are giving out cookies at the gathering for French learners.

Come to the dark side. We have Assimil.